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When Irish Eyes Are Killing: Lois Lane
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“So…you don’t love me anymore?”
The question rips at your throat, rending and tearing until you feel raw and exposed. Until your heart shudders in exhausted terror as it slows from the panting, stumbling pace that began on your bed when the impossible happened.
And it is impossible. You’re dreaming. That’s what you’ve been telling yourself over and over again these past torturous days. Any minute now, you thought, you will wake with tears on your face and relief choking you, back in the real world where everything is as it should be.
Where Clark loves you.
But this doesn’t feel dreamlike anymore. With that question still hovering between you, this all suddenly, horribly feels much too real. His heat and his stare and the intensity he carries everywhere with him that always made you want to lean in even before you understood why.
He’s real. He’s here. And this is not a dream.
But how? you want to scream. How did you so quickly, so irrevocably, lose the looks he’s given you since Perry first partnered you? The touches he has doled out so generously and so tactfully? The boundless empathy and understanding you never had to ask for but always took advantage of?
The kisses so close to the moon you could reach out and touch it but didn’t because you never wanted to stop caressing him. The laughter with open eyes and unburdened shoulders. The support and encouragement and hope. The shudders that shook the Man of Steel when you almost died and he rescued you with the name of Clark on your lips.
But of course--that’s what changed it, isn’t it? That--your mortality; your humanity, your unsuperness--is what has cost you everything you’ve only just admitted you love and want and need.
Gone. All of it gone so that now you stand here in your apartment while Superman once more breaks your heart, only this is so much worse because it’s Clark Kent who sees good in everyone and has always looked at you as if you are the sun…but now you’re only a fever and he’s cured of it.
And you know that Martha said he hasn’t had the same experiences as most people, and you know you’re the first person he’s ever voluntarily shared so much of his life with, and you want to be understanding, as much a friend to him as he’s always been to you, but…
But you never thought you’d be here. Standing where Clark once sat on a park bench, and oh, no one has ever played the long game of revenge quite so well or quite so patiently as Clark.
Clark who then lied and said he didn’t love you, but now doesn’t have to lie to say the same thing.
Clark who was there for you anyway, who was your friend and support and confidant. Who waited to spring his own date invitation on you until the right time and asked you to marry him with his heart in his eyes. Who now looks so hurt and crushed as he destroys you.
And you were right. You were right all along, all those times you warned yourself never to let anyone in, never to open up, never to fall in love.
Because this…this hurts. And it’s real. And there’s nothing you can do to change it. You won’t be Clark and wait and wait and wait to repay the favor. You won’t suffer and make him suffer in turn.
No. This all ends. Tonight. Right now.
Forever.
***
